The Sky Below: A True Story of Summits, Space, and Speed [Kindle in Motion] by Scott Parazynski & Susy Flory

Author:Scott Parazynski & Susy Flory [Parazynski, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2017-08-01T04:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Fire and Rain

The potential possibilities of any child are the most intriguing and stimulating in all creation.

—Ray L. Wilbur, third President of Stanford University

EDWARDS AIRFORCE BASE, CALIFORNIA, 2001

With heavy clouds and rain in Florida, we fire Endeavour’s orbital maneuvering engines on the tail of the ship to shave off just about 500 feet per second from the 25,400 required to stay in orbit. Earth’s gravitational tug now exceeds our centripetal momentum, and we are literally falling out of the sky a half a world away from Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Graceful and weightless at first, we very slowly begin to sense the force of gravity on our bodies and notice it visibly in the cockpit around us. We will soon need to exchange most of our kinetic energy for heat, slamming through the thickening atmosphere and creating a fireball of superheated gases around our craft, generating a pulsatile orange light show for the lucky dudes on the flight deck. I can hear them oohing and ahhing over the amazing views, and I point out how much I hate them from the coach seats down in the middeck.

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